Contents

Life

Lee has a long history with Tolkien's fiction; he read The Hobbit after leaving the Royal Air Force in 1945, and since The Fellowship of the Ring came out, he read all Tolkien's books once a year. Lee also had the experience of actually meeting Tolkien in person, making him the only individual involved in the film trilogy to do so. He always envisioned himself as being Gandalf, so when he read that Peter Jackson would be adapting his bedside book, he immediately called his agent.

Jackson

Although he realised he was too old to play Gandalf, he read the part. He did not get it, but was called back as Saruman instead. He had never been in a movie with the actual Gandalf, Sir Ian McKellen, but the two quickly became friends, being the oldest actors on the set (though Lee was some twenty years older).

Lee shot most of his scenes in Wellington, in the main studio, but also shot one scene in Wellington's national park. He visited New Zealand four times, the longest time being ten weeks. He later did some post-synching in London.

While jetlagged, Lee broke his hand smashing it against a wall. Several shots of him in the finished films show him carefully hiding this bandaged left hand.

Quotations

What Professor Tolkien achieved is unique in the literature of my lifetime. Indeed, in my opinion, he had reached the peak of literary invention of all time. Nothing like it has ever existed, and probably never will.—Christopher Lee, foreword to The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare

It's just going to be...I'm trying to think of the right word - without making it sound like the usual fashionable superlative. I think it will create film history. I think it's going to have the biggest impact, on screen, of anything of the last 40 or 50 years—Christopher Lee, SFX Magazine June #65

Saruman is number one. Saruman is, very definitely, the most brilliant, the most powerful, with the greatest intellect and the greatest knowledge. Gandalf...well he's number two. But Saruman's whole character becomes perverted and distorted and he lusts for power and gradually, as it very often does, the old famous quote 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'.—Christopher Lee, Fox's Quest for the Ring